Page 7 of Essence of Fear

Konstantin, though?

He was a little different.

Konstantin was calculating—he was the king on the chess board, in a lot of ways. He thought several moves ahead, and he never let anyone know what those moves were before he made them. Some people might call that unpredictable, but she didn’t know if that was the word she would use. The fear Konstantin invoked in others came from his ability to seem harmless until it was far too late, and he was never obvious.

Nothing he did was obvious.

Standing there in his three-piece suit, Konstantin looked almost out of place in the rest of the crowd. There was just an air about him—something that warned people from his aura alone to stay back; don’t engage. His usual smirk was gone as he looked at something off to his left, giving her a good view of his profile and the hard lines of his face. It was his features, that strong jaw and the coldness in his gaze, that reminded her of their father. But it was the structure of his face that reminded her of their long-dead mother.

Kolya looked just like their dad.

Her and Konstantin, though?

They took more after their ma.

She wasn’t sure how she felt about her brothers, but more importantly … she didn’t know how she felt about Konstantin. He’d been the one to send their father away, after all. He’d made Vadim leave Chicago and exiled him to Russia.

Viktoria wasn’t stupid. She knew that the way her father treated and raised her was quite different from the way Vadim had behaved toward his sons over the decades. She’d always blamed that on the Bratva—on her father being the Pakhan, and her brothers being his soldiers. But she couldn’t ignore that there had never been a time when Vadim acted like their father, either. It was always just the boss and his men. Even when they were young, Kolya and Konstantin had needed to be men and not boys.

She was always able to be Vadim’s little girl—his daughter. Nothing more and nothing less. It was that reason why seeing Konstantin waiting for her because, apparently, he’d gotten news she was coming back home without her actually telling him, put her on edge. It left her feeling confused.

She loved her brother.

And her father.

Now, her father had been taken from her. Konstantin had done that. It left her with a complex that she wasn’t exactly ready to deal with, not that she knew the first place to begin with it all.

All at once, Konstantin turned, and his gaze leveled on her. That was another thing about her brother. His stare was always penetrating—yeah, that was the best way to describe it, she supposed. Penetrating.

A person didn’t need to say a thing when Konstantin was around. He didn’t need words and explanations to know what someone was thinking or feeling. It was like he just stared at you and he knew it all, anyway.

Viktoria was not an exception to that rule.

“Your trip was good?” her brother asked.

Viktoria came to a stop a couple of feet away from him. It allowed her enough distance that he wouldn’t assume she wanted to greet him with something like a hug. “Good enough.”

Konstantin nodded. “And Vadim?”

“You don’t care.”

Her brother arched a brow. “Vik—”

“You sent him away. You wanted him to go and you took over his place here. You don’t have to pretend that you care about how he’s living in Russia, brat.”

Konstantin’s jaw tightened before he relaxed and offered her a smile. “I wasn’t asking for him, actually. More for you, hmm?”

Well …

“He’s making do,” she replied.

That was about as much as she wanted to give her brother, regarding their father. She had no doubt that Konstantin had a whole handful of people to watch Vadim. Likely the same people who reported back to him on their father’s behavior and actions while he lived out the rest of his life in exile, away from his family. He didn’t need her filling him in on the details.

“Was the trip … worth it, then?” Konstantin asked.

Viktoria sighed. “If you’re asking if it helped me with anything, then the answer is no.”

“I figured.”